Neglected Black artist get thier due in new dictionary

CHICAGO - Music is about making beautiful sounds. For Sam Floyd, it's also about recognition - something he says many black composers have failed to receive.

As a remedy, Floyd has helped gather the legacy of five centuries of music composition into a two-volume, 1,273-page reference book called the International Dictionary of Black Composers.

"Many of these people, other than composers of classical music, have not been treated as composers," said Floyd, director of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College here.

"They have been treated as musicians and performers. This shows there is another side to these people."

Profiled are long-ignored classical composers, creators of turn-of-the-century marches and ragtime music, mid-century jazz composers and writers of more recent popular music.

The dictionary, edited by Floyd, includes biographies and critical essays.

It lists the works of composers such as pop icon Curtis Mayfield, best known for his 1965 hit "People Get Ready," and jazz greats Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington ("Mood Indigo," "Sophisticated Lady") and his cohort Billy Strayhorn ("Satin Doll," "Lush Life").

It does have some glaring omissions; the composers of many Motown hits of the 1960s and 1970s are not mentioned.

Floyd says they will be added in later editions. Classical music composers comprise the largest group of artists profiled, with 87 listings.

Among them is Vicente Lusitano of Portugal - whose book of 23 motets, or sacred music, "Liber pimus epigramatum," in 1551 makes him the first Black composer known to have his music published.

Reference books profiling composers and musicians are used both by scholars and by music groups seeking material to perform, said Northwestern University professor M. William Karlins.

Floyd's dictionary may be part of a trend, he added.

"A lot of people who were neglected are now getting attention because white, European composers have gotten all the attention for the last several hundred years," Karlins said.

The dictionary was the idea of Chicago-based Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Publisher George Walsh said the large number of reference works that focus on white composers motivated him to turn to Floyd to give the field some balance.

Floyd said the time and money needed to create such a dictionary - it took five years to produce - and a perceived lack of a market discouraged others from doing so.

"They saw a significant need for this," Floyd said of Fitzroy Dearborn. "I wanted to do it. But I wanted it to be different from other such works."

Floyd enlisted 108 music scholars to write essays about the dictionary's 185 composers.

Classical and jazz composers whose music was recorded or published were considered for inclusion.

For blues, researchers also considered how the artists' style influenced others in the field.

For instance, Blind Lemon Jefferson - a self-taught blues singer-guitarist who froze to death in a 1929 Chicago snowstorm at age 36 - was a prolific recorder of music in the four years before his death.

His complex and rapid guitar playing influenced later blues guitarists, according to David Evans, a University of Memphis music professor.

Howard University music professor James Weldon Norris says the dictionary is a necessity, particularly when it comes to classical music. A lack of knowledge about black composers means their music is seldom performed, he says.

"Not only are they not known in general, but Black people don't know them because they are not being taught," said Norris, who as director of the Howard University Chorus includes a new or unknown work by a Black composer in all of the choir's performances.

"So many are neglected," he said. "There is a long list of African-Spanish, African-Portuguese and African-Indian composers. They were the most famous and talented musicians of their time" in the 1600s.